By Cristian Roldán
Three years have passed since the day Mr. (Paul) Roldán called me asking me if I could create an artwork that connected the island with the diaspora. That time seems like nothing compared with the first migration from the island, when workers left El Fanguito for the mainland U.S. in search of a better life 75 years ago. As someone who immigrated to this diaspora twelve years ago, I have the honor of creating and searching for that intersection between two realities unified by a single identity, where airplanes have become the bridge between the homeland and nostalgia.
As I remember my childhood, playing with paper airplanes in el campo or in a schoolyard in Juncos, I never understood the significance of the airplane in our culture until now, when I was commissioned to create an art piece that connects our culture between the diaspora and the island. As simple as it might look, those paper airplanes leaving El Fangito would eventually transform into a real airplane. As we live and reinvent ourselves in the diaspora, we grow older, longing for the island as the promised land, ending with an airplane between our hands, as a recreation of a painting by Ramón Frade, el pan nuestro. But instead of holding a bundle of Platanos, he holds an airplane, symbolizing migration and displacement in the search for a better future.
